BOXING is like having a delicacy.
You can eat it and become fed up with it. But then after sometime you
begin to miss it and want some more. The bad thing with both eating a
delicacy and boxing is that they depend on one’s health.
One’s health today depends on one’s
financial clout. Both Frank Bruno and Floyd Mayweather want to come back
in prize fighting. Both of them are boxers who have had or still do
have some economic might. They may be in the know about it all or they
may be ignorant of the harm they are risking. But time, not being on
their side, is their bad friend now.
Put it in another way; odds are not in
their favour. Bruno is 54 and Mayweather is 38. They are well past their
prime in the game. Having seen better days both in form and in cash,
the best they can do or, the best
anybody can wish them is to be off the
ring, well away on some beach basking in the sun on a holiday.
Yet that is what they seem to be missing
and now are craving for another fight for more cash. Do they want to
die there? No! Boxing is like having a delicacy. When you crave for it,
the mouth waters and it is only more boxing that will satisfy the
desire. Pugilism has something odd about it too. Outside the ring, a
boxer is always the champ.
They think they can beat any boxer they
have not met. When a boxer punches the bag, which indeed does not punch
back, the boxer is always the champion. He is the winner. The punching
bag is ever the loser. The boxer can dance. He can feint. He can duck.
He can weave, bob and sidestep in a manner he likes.
There are no mistakes made. If any, they
will be learned in the ring when suddenly a punch lands and something
bad happens. Mayweather and Bruno are risking the ugly possibility. Then
they surely will retire. An era has its people, beasts and new
developments. With age reflex declines and the result is costly and
could be costlier.
Bruno is reportedly having a bipolar
disorder, a state of health that causes extreme swings of moods – a
serious pathological health state. Financially, Frank Bruno is doing
poorly, records say.
“I have no choice but to come back,” he
is reported to have said. That summarises why Bruno is coming back.
Poverty! Where all the money he earned in his 14-year professional
boxing career went is his own story and he did earn quite a good sum of
it.
If that is the reason the 6-3 Briton
wants to box younger boxers and risk having his retina torn more, why is
Floyd Mayweather -- the money man with millions of American dollars in
the bank – risking more bruising fights? Is it avarice, ambition or
vanity? Muhammad Ali retired three times and came back to beat George
Foreman and Joe Frazier to retire for the fourth time.
The motivating factor behind the return
was ambition for more glory, pride and vanity. It was, however, mingled
with the need for more money. He was broke. Ali is now surely retired
for good with Parkinson Syndrome. Nobody knows at what point in his
boxing he got the punch that rendered his body victim to the health
condition.
However, it would have been best for him
to have retired for good earlier at some point in his career and never
went back to boxing. After all, he cannot be said to have been badly off
at any time in his life, alimonies for his divorced wives
notwithstanding.
Still, many may ask themselves that with
an estimated net worth of US$650 million why would Floyd Mayweather
return to the ring to expose his body to further beating at the age of
38? It is said ambition killed Julius Caesar. But what would Mayweather
have ambition for after getting so much money and getting credit as the
best boxer there is today?
Something is calling him back to the
martial arena and it all can be viewed with pessimism. That though, is
beside the point. Significant is the question of why boxers, ever rich
ones like Floyd Mayweather still crave to return to the ring to fight it
out with younger opponents and risk injuries which could last the rest
of their lifetime.
Their history that created the fighting
love in them from childhood deserves some study to expound the whole
mystery. It may be harbouring the answer. Mike ‘Iron’ Tyson is said to
have dished out money like nuts to people for no reason at all. Our
boxers could end up ex-aged boxers craving to come back because of a
pathetic economic situation.
That means they must keep aside for
rainy days something from what they earn today from the sport. The
question is: How much do they earn from the sport? National boxing
legend Habib Kinyogoli may not have earned much in the sport but not
talked of making a comeback at over 68 and is passing away the rest of
his life training younger boxers.
Amateur boxing does not pay much if
anything. Indeed amateur sports have little gain. Yet it is what the
nation’s great athlete Filbert Bayi must have used to build his economic
power base that helped him create his present financial cocoon today.
Professional boxing in the country may be more rewarding than amateur,
but it is a career that is not developed.
Most important though, is how well a
boxer uses the earning of his active life. Extravagant spending leaves
them only with the desire to come back to avoid embarrassment, but only
to show embarrassingly the useless boxer left in them. It is a desperate
attempt to keep up with the Joneses.
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